Jimmy Page

[mcgruff]

Finally installed Jimmy Page wiring last night in my dot and - wow! - really exceeded my expectations. It's added lots great new sounds to my dot.

 

There seem to be quite a few variations on JP wiring. This is the one I chose:

 

 

The diagram shows a four connector pup selector switch although you can probably re-use a three connector epiphone selector. If it's the same as the old one on my dot, the two middle lugs are just soldered together and can be prised apart.

 

I bought a Neutrik jack socket but it didn't fit - not enough thread pokes through the top. I'm not sure but I think it was a 1/4" threaded section height but you need 3/8". Check that before you order. Ended up re-using the old jack.

 

Pots were Bourns 500k audio taper push pulls, PDB183-GTR01-504A2. I'm not sure exactly how accurate my budget LCR meter is but I measured the highest at 522k and the lowest 459k. That's why I bought 5: the 459k pot wasn't used. Not sure how much difference it really makes though.

 

With the Bourns audio taper, everything seems to happen in a small section near the high end of the scale. I was expecting it to be much more gradual but it's not something that really bothers me too much. That kind of taper could be better for some things like volume effects with the little finger curled round a volume knob.

 

The pots were just a little too wide to fit the holes drilled in the guitar but it was an easy fix. Just push an 8mm drill bit through at an angle and (gently!) rotate it round a couple of times in a full circle. Make sure you've got a decent amount of drill bit pushed through the hole or it can skip out and jump across the top, scratching your finish.

 

Was a wee bit worried that they might be too tall to fit inside the guitar but in the end that was no problem.

 

Couple of 0.015 Sprague orange drops (715P15352JD3) were used for tone caps. These small value caps still give me plenty high cut.

 

I did the usual thing of attaching the pots etc to a piece of cardboard, spaced apart the same as they would be in their final positions inside the guitar, before soldering. Wires between pots were cut just a little bit longer than they needed to be so there would be room to wiggle the pots around a little inside the guitar, when you're finally trying to pull them through the holes drilled in the guitar top. When you solder grounds to pot bodies, don't leave a big lump of solder and wire on the base of the pot. You can attach grounds here but be careful not to increase the height of the pot too much or they might not fit in the tight space inside the guitar.

 

Next I tested everything carefully before wiring up the pickups using a multimeter to do a bunch of continuity checks with various pots pushed in and pulled out. It helps to visualise what's going on if you redraw the circuit with the tone pots & caps omitted (but not the DPDT switches mounted on the tone pots...). This part of the circuit just bleeds off treble straight to ground. They have to work too, of course, but you can forget about them when you're testing the main circuit & switching options.

 

Finally, the pickups were wired up and I tested it all again for real. It works :) Now for the hard part...

 

The way you're supposed to do this is feed bits of thread or string through the holes in the guitar top, tie them onto the tips of the pot knobs, then pull everything through. It actually works really well - easy peasy. The only thing you have to watch out for is getting into a tangle. The strings themselves have to run clear of each other and, once everything is stuffed inside, you have to be careful that pots don't get tangled up in their own wires. You'll probably find that you need to push components in in a certain order - start with the jack socket. It also helps to "rationalise" the wiring a little, if you can. If you've got a bunch of wires running in parallel, tape them all together to reduce the chance of something getting caught up in a tangle. Be careful still to leave a little wiggle room though.

 

It's a buzz when you finally see all the knobs lined up, gently tug one up through the hole... and then it gets stuck. I found I had to lever the tip of the knobs with a screwdriver or knife blade while tugging gently on the string before it would finally pull through.

 

I don't have a full list of all the options available with this wiring scheme. There are coil taps for each pickup, series-in-phase and series-out-of-phase for both pickups together, and a bunch of other stuff where I don't even know what's going on except that very often I hit a switch and there's another nice tone. Tone controls seem to be quite important in some settings in ways I didn't expect.

 

I think what you'd get out of this in your own guitar depends on the specific pickups you've got. For example, my bridge pickup is a home-made PAF style pup which has a nice sound but it's about as dark as I'd ever want to go in a bridge humbucker. This may be the best starting point for JP wiring. A lot of the new sounds are brighter ones so if you start off with a bright guitar, they might not be so useful. Since you're using humbuckers, you probably won't have a bright guitar though ;) There are some.

 

The out of phase sounds in particular will be different with different pickups. The greater the similarity between the two pickups, the stronger the effect since there are more common frequencies to cancel out.

 

If you use low-output PAF-style humbuckers, splitting can give you some very weak tones. There just aren't enough turns of wire. 8,000 turns of wire or so would be quite common in a single coil (although of course they vary a lot) but one coil in a PAF will probably only have 5,000 or so. I've been experimenting with a tap in the slug coil so the split uses one full coil and a tapped part of the other. That adds some more turns to fill out the sound. One of the pickups in my dot has this 3-coil split & tap setup, the other just a normal split. They both sound good to me - YMMV.

 

Finally, it could be that all the switching options are most useful in a recording situation, where subtle differences in tone are more important and you've got time to fiddle around to find them. Since that's all I use my dot for, I'm in tone heaven. Again, YMMV.

 

So that's my experience with Jimmy Page wiring. Really worked out well for me and I don't think I'd ever have another dual humbucker guitar without it.

 

PS: can one of the mods edit the title from "Jimmy Page" to "Jimmy Page Wiring"? My mistake - thanks.

[rednefceleb]

You must have the patience of a saint to solder all of that.

[mako shark]

Just finished my Epi' 135 into a Gibby clone project. I also did the Jimmy Page 4 x push/pull pot million tones mod.

You cant imagine the grief i had trying to squeeze the innards in through the f holes of a thinline. Boy, i swore a few times, i can tell you.

!35 in the middle -

[mcgruff]

You must have the patience of a saint to solder all of that.

 

It was worth it :)

[mcgruff]

Just finished my Epi' 135 into a Gibby clone project. I also did the Jimmy Page 4 x push/pull pot million tones mod.

You cant imagine the grief i had trying to squeeze the innards in through the f holes of a thinline. Boy, i swore a few times, i can tell you.

 

I wasn't 100% sure if my pots were going to fit. My fall back plan was to cut an access panel out of the back .

 

Did you like the new sounds?

 

PS: Nice collection.

[mako shark]

I wasn't 100% sure if my pots were going to fit. My fall back plan was to cut an access panel out of the back .

 

Did you like the new sounds?

 

PS: Nice collection.

 

Noooo!!!! Dont cut a hole in the back. M ind you i did think about it a couple of times! Funny thing is that i have seen Gibby 135's with rear access panels!

Still setting her up, the neck is good,minimal relief.Got the high E down to 2 6/4ths and the low E to 4 6/4ths and no choking or buzzing!

I replaced the Epi pups with Iron Gear Rolling Mills,they sound great already, and i hav'nt taken the clear plastic protection off yet,let alone set the poles!

Will put it through its 1st real test tomorrow.

[Bluemans335]

You must have the patience of a saint to solder all of that.

 

Not that hard to do, a good diagram is a big help. The second guitar I ever re-wired was putting the JP system in an Epi LP Custom. I currently have the JP system in four Epi 335's. Epiphone ought to have a few models with it.